today i was reminded once again of how lucky i was to get out of my former workplace with only mid-level self-loathing, minimal collateral damage and most of my sanity.
dawn – you are an awesome boss. i think i love you.
Archives for category: workin’ for the man
there is a 3-flat going up next door to where i work. this morning aaron saw a workman carrying a little stray cat from the site to his van. we all gathered around the windows watching the gray striped kitten crawl around the front seat. i was filled with longing.
on saturday eric’s sister was telling me the story of how she adopted her big orange striped cat. again with the longing. the next time eric’s brother-in-law asks me if i want the cat i might grab scout and run.
watch out carrie.
check out what dawn brought me from japan! tiny plastic food! tiny sushi! if you look at the re-ment site it seems like all they sell is tiny plastic food and furniture and purses. also she brought me some vintage postcards and a little guy with crazy hair who i don’t recognize but he’s neat (i realize the whole ‘crazy hair’ thing doesn’t really narrow it down at all. sorry.)!
update: the pink stuff is herbal tea with cherry blossoms. thanks kyle!
two weeks ago i had the Best Day Ever but i haven’t had time to write about it until now. actually, it was really the one thing that put me in an awesome mood and everything else was just gravy.
a few weeks ago i wrote a php cms application for a website my new company had built awhile ago. dawn and i hit the road for indiana to meet with the client; she was taking photographs of their newest piece of equipment doing its thing and i had to present my app’s user guide and do a little training. the company in question works in the recycling industry and has developed some processes to make aluminum reclaimation much more environmentally-friendly. i had never been to an industrial facility before and i was excited – my appetite whet by previously-taken photos of giant aluminum-melting furnaces and yellow-hot metals flowing and sparking like something out of T2.
one of our contacts at this company is an incredibly sweet german guy named karl (*name changed to that of two of my friends’ older brother’s name to keep me from getting dooced, even though everything i have to say is basically about how awesome everything about this company is and you could totally figure out who/what i’m talking about if you really wanted to, but hey – i’m making an effort here.). karl had a friend in from germany who was also visiting the plant for the first time. dawn got her camera ready and we put on our hard hats (!!!) and followed karl out into the cold drizzly rain.
the company’s buildings are arranged in a big U and we emerged from the inner right arm of the U. our destination was the building at the base of the U. the entire space inside the U is filled with rows of hundreds of pressure gauges and huge pre-fab parts of as-yet-unknown metal structures. on the far side of the yard were about 6 tall perfect white cylinders, their bottoms fenced in with lots of pipes snaking everywhere between them and a tall dark grey rectangular building on stilts. the air rumbled with the muffled sub-bass of giant machinery – a steady grating throbbing of moving parts and rushing air like an old steam train idling in a station or a giant bellows being pumped by one of those cave trolls from lotr. we wove our way between 6 foot tall sections of pipe as thick fog billowed across our path and clung to bottoms of racks of gauges and our ankles.
seeing that fog is the most surreal moment i think i’ve ever had. it was cold outside – maybe 40° – and i couldn’t feel any heat emanating from the plant’s opening (door or hatch doesn’t sufficiently describe how gaping and huge it was) so the fog felt like…magic. like the beginning of a story where the characters journey to a strange new land and see things that no one has dreamt of before – the moment just before an explorer realizes he’s found a place that isn’t on any map. this was my mindset when i stepped out of the gray rain and into the plant’s black interior.
we got new phones at work – the kind that has one basestation and wireless satellite handsets. dawn is kickin’ it in philly with some clients today so aaron and i set up the new phones. out of love for our country (but clearly not for our ears) we set all of the handsets’ ringtones to ‘the star spangled banner’. unfortunately, they don’t ring in unison. it’s just like in real life where one person is always a little late. you know, like:
…by the dawn’s early light (-ight)
what so prou(-ou-)dly we hai(hai-)led
at the twilight’s (ssss) last (ssss) gleaming (-ng)…
you get the idea.
i quit my job – the job that made the last year of my life completely miserable. the changes in my personality over the past year became all too apparent during my trip to LA. i hung out with people i hadn’t seen in years or haven’t been able to talk to very often and i realized – i am not the same person they knew…and i don’t like the person i’ve become. LA friends – you gave me hope and helped me fully realize that i deserve better. hugs all around! as for my former employer – thank you. thank you for making it really easy for me to quit.
jeff took us all to fogo de chao today for eric’s going away party. i am…stuffed. in pain. but oh, it was glorious. so much meat, so many tomatoes. mmm. highly recommended, but only if you like meat. a lot of it. force-fed. for an hour.
i don’t know if i’ve ever read something that better describes how i’ve felt for the last year. the entry starts with ‘most of my life…’
i don’t even have the energy to explain all of the ridiculousness that just went down at work. let’s just say, it’s ridiculous. it’s so ridiculous – i am so FILLED with the ridiculousness of what just happened – that i can’t even think of another adjective besides ‘ridiculous’ or maybe ‘bullshit’ or something like that.
when i started working full-time there were the requisite salary negotiations. where i work, “reviews” only happen once a year, therefore raises only happen once a year. i, and probably everyone else, have consistently gotten the shaft in terms of appropriate pay; the price of working at a small company. i made more hourly while working part-time in college than i did when i became a full-time contract employee after graduation. i did not receive a raise upon becoming an actually full-time employee. in fact, the first offer extended to me was considerably lower than my yearly salary as a contractor. eventually i insisted upon a raise, citing past pay cuts (which i’m sure i wasn’t supposed to notice). i asked for a very fair amount, especially since some people unexpectedly quit and left their salaries (which were each higher than what i was getting) behind. thusly, my salary was “raised” to the same amount as when i was a contractor. granted, i did gain excellent health insurance, etc…but still. i mean, you’re kidding me right?
i agreed to this “new amount” contingent upon a review and $2000 raise in 5 months. this seemed pretty generous on my part, since this future amount was still probably less than what i could’ve earned elsewhere. i am a loyal, if crotchety, employee and despite other crappy things happening around that time, i was not willing to abandon the company and coworkers that were my chicago family.
the time for the review came and went and i decided not to push things by asking, “what happened to our deal?” or something similar. other more pressing worries were at work in my non-professional life and i needed to get through one obstacle at a time.
i collected my paycheck every month (only one time a month) as usual. as always, i didn’t look at the amount until i was depositing the check (i think it’s sort of rude and tacky to rip into it at work in front of everyone). i noticed that the amount seemed different. i couldn’t tell what was different, that is whether the number was higher or lower than usual, just that the number didn’t look the same as before. i thought nothing of this, attributing the discrepancy to adjusted taxes or the like. yesterday i received my paycheck and as usual, set it aside to deposit later on. then i remembered that odd change in numbers. so i opened my check at my desk (gasp!) and proceeded to do the ol’ multiplication. the amount was different all right. what did i find?